Wrestlemania!

I feel no shame. As other wrestling fans will already know, since I end every post with a Cactus Jack quote.

Wrestlemania is on in two days, and a few of us are off to the newly reopened sports bar in town for it.

I used to watch wrestling when I was smaller, when every match had people being hit in the face with chairs and swearing and bleeding everywhere. Since then everyone from back then has retired or is really old and only come out for Wrestlemania.

My favourite wrestler ever was Shawn Michaels, so I watched his last two matches with The Undertaker and was very sad when he retired. They have been watched lots since.

This guy.

Other than those two matches, I’ve barely kept up with any of the business for about five years. I went back to watching it every week last year, but it was rubbish so that didn’t last long.

But last year Undertaker was back as usual, against Triple H. The Rock and Chris Jericho were back too, so five or six of us went out to watch it. There were about 150 other people there, and the atmosphere was just brilliant. Plus you could get three pints for £6.

Hoping for something of the same this year, although I’m not sure what is happening with most of the matches. It’s also on til 4am, so I probably won’t be able to get any decent food on the way home.

This year has Undertaker vs CM Punk, HHH vs Brock Lesnar and John Cena vs The Rock to get me excited enough to go watch it.

So, why is it embarrassing to like wrestling?

Because people who like UFC and know nothing about wrestling say ‘it’s fake’ and so on, and generally dismiss any claims of it being a valid source of entertainment.

Which is fine, for them. For me, watching something where the winner is already decided but gives the same amount of emotion in half an hour as a year of UFC, and provides better storytelling than anything in sport, isn’t really sport to begin with.

It’s entertainment. Like the kind of entertainment The Rock continues to being to the big screen. I regularly sit down and Youtube my favourite football clips, and watch them all back to back because they’re like the highlights of a lifetime watching football.

Wrestlemania is like that, but live.

It takes all the passion and emotion of sports, takes storytelling from the movies (more recently it’s been more like soap operas, but nevertheless), and puts it all into four hours for people to yell and cheer and boo at.

So this is why I’m looking forward to watching Wrestlemania 29. Not as much as last year, but I hope the atmosphere will be just as electric.

And to people still saying it’s fake, they do a very good job of making this look real. (Pretty gruesome injury, don’t watch it unless you don’t mind watching legs pointing the wrong way.)

People are entitled to their opinions, so those who think wrestling is stupid probably can’t be convinced. I don’t think I’ll lose much sleep over that though.

And I know I’ve categorised it under Sport, but I’m not making a ‘Sports Entertainment’ category just for this post, so there.

Also, Spotify doesn’t open automatically for me anymore.

Wrestlemania 29, April 7, midnight. Watch it.

If you don’t want to watch those, the two HBK-Taker matches I was talking about are here: WM25 and here: WM26. You’re welcome.